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Goldilocks and the Interactive Bear: The Privacy Nightmare

March 28, 2017

A Wake-up Call: The Rise and Demise of Hello Barbie

Once upon a time, which happened to be close to around March 2015, Mattel introduced Hello Barbie, the world’s first “interactive doll”. With the press of a single button, the voice of its user was to be recorded and processed, and the Hello Barbie would respond to the question or statement recorded. The interactive doll appeared to be a dream come true for children and parents alike: for the former, an ever-present friend with whom to babble and play, and, for the latter, someone to provide answers and explanations to the incessant curiosity of their child, granting them a little respite. How could this not be a miracle?

However, soon after the release of Hello Barbie, cybersecurity commentators warned against the potential privacy risks of the interactive doll, and "connected toys" generally. As reported in a previous blog post, in November 2015, VTech, a Hongkong supplier of children’s connected learning toys, was hacked, compromising the personal data of over 6.5 million child profiles. VTech fixed the breach and amended its terms of use to warn against the risk of data piracy, and that was that.

Following the publicity around the incident, and VTech’s quick fix of the situation, interactive dolls and their engineers and makers largely vanished from the headlines. Presumably, toy manufacturers, and parents, had learned their lesson on the privacy risks that come along with connected toys.

The Comeback of Interactive Toys and Dolls: A Messy Affair

History tends to repeat itself, however, and this story is no exception. CloudPets, essentially an app that allows parents and friends to record and send messages to a connected CloudPet stuffed animal from anywhere in the world, suffered a similar incident. In what was reported to be the result of a lapse of security, private conversations between family members could be overheard via a listening device installed in the kids' teddy bear.

In addition, the personal data of over 821,000 users and owners of CloudPets was reportedly discovered to be easily accessible online. How easy was it really, you ask? Too easy, apparently, since it was reported that an unidentified number of individuals managed to hack the database and personal accounts and recover sensitive data by using brute force. The database storing the personal data was, according to reports, protected by neither a firewall nor a password, and the personal accounts of the users and owners used overly simplistic secured passwords and usernames such as “123456, “qwerty”, and “password”.

Another interactive toy also made the news in early 2017. The My Friend Cayla doll was declared to be an “illegal espionage apparatus” by Germany’s Federal Network in February 2017 as it was deemed to be a surveillance device disguised as another object, which cannot be legally manufactured, sold or possessed in Germany. The access to the doll was unsecured, and any hacker within 15 meters of the doll could access the doll via the Bluetooth connection and interfere with messages received and sent by the doll. The doll cannot be sold in Germany anymore, and owners of the doll were ordered to disable its “smart” feature at the very least.

Moving Forward: How to Compromise between Companionship and Cybersecurity

Two lessons can be learned from these three attempts to provide children with the companionship of a virtual friend.

First, there seems to be a higher expectation of privacy for children, which has been expressed by a call to boycott Hello Barbie following the 2015 incident, as well as the strict implementation of espionage rules by Germany. The interactive dolls described above are not significantly different in their purpose and functioning from the Siris (Apple) and Alexas (Amazon) of this world: both record, process and store voices and personal data in order to provide companionship and on-the-spot information to their owners and users. However, they differ greatly in their targeted audience: one is aimed at adults, while the other is for children, generally regarded as vulnerable.

In this regard, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (“OPC”) made this distinction clear in its guide to collecting personal data from children, published in December 2015, stating: “the [OPC] has consistently viewed personal information relating to youth and children as being of particular sensitivity, especially the younger they are, and that any collection, use or disclosure of such information must be done with this in mind (if at all)”. Keeping this warning in mind, the OPC’s first tip is to limit or, avoid altogether, the collection of personal information. Other tips touch on the retention of data and ways to obtain proper consent.

Second, while some first attempts to provide children with interactive toys have resulted in significant missteps, , interactive toys are here to stay, as evidenced by their comeback following the Hello Barbie incident. Toy-makers must therefore find a way to manufacture a toy that satisfies Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bears’ wants and needs.

For more information, please see McCarthy Tétrault’s guide on cybersecurity risk management, which is available here.